Saturday Short Thought: Concluding Chronicles and Biblical Theology

January 28, 2012January 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Over the past three weeks I have been preaching a series in 2Chronicles 26-36, which is effectively the end of the Hebrew canon (in the typical Jewish ordering of books), and the conclusion of the backwards looking summary of the Old Testament. Because my wife is expecting any day, I am uncertain of being able to preach tomorrow, and so made sure I finished the series last week. But I now have (potentially) another two messages in the series tomorrow since the baby seems to be comfortable where it is.

This leaves me in the nice position of being finished with the series, yet not finished. My plan is to allow an aspect of Biblical theology to put the finishing touches on the series. Let me explain.

One of the big themes in the last chapters of Chronicles is that of the devotion of the kings to the Lord. Some were, some weren’t. And the biggest manifestation in pre-exile Israel lay in the issue of overt idolatry. As the book ends, hope dawns with Cyrus’ decree that the temple should be rebuilt. Perhaps God’s promise to David will be fulfilled after all?

So in the progression of revelation, we move to a post-exilic Israel where overt idolatry was never a feature again. Historically we see this determination for purity in books like Ezra and Nehemiah, but canonically, the next step from Chronicles is Matthew. It’s a new world in Israel in Jesus’ day. No physical idols. But no idols?

Jesus addresses the issue of the less tangible idolatry of his day in the Sermon on the Mount. And the beauty of this is that Matthew 6 speaks so directly to our, typically non-physical idol, cultural setting. In post-exilic Israel, as in the modern Western world, money has become the “ba’al” for many. Yet the issue of our devotion to God remains paramount. Who is bigger in our eyes? The false god, indeed the replacement god of financial security, or the true God who really cares?

So maybe I will get to preach Matthew 6 tomorrow to finish the Chronicles series. Maybe I’ll get to push further into the New Testament and consider other areas of covert idolatry facing believers today. Or maybe I won’t!

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Next Week? Eco-Preaching: Recycling Sermons

New Online Preaching Resource: Help Needed To Spread the Word

December 5, 2011December 5, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I decided to start a facebook community page associated with this site. The link is facebook.com/biblicalpreaching.net

Here’s my thinking:

1. It can be an informal conversation between preachers and those who care about preaching.

2. It can be a place to link to helpful material beyond this site, and including this site.

3. It can help to spread the word about the value of the ministry of biblical preaching through a different network of people.

4. The informal conversations and comments there can feed into content for this site.

Here’s my request:

1. Would you help spread the word about it by clicking on this link and liking the page (this will help it get suggested to others as facebook sees it being liked by more people).

2. Would you help spread the word by linking to it with a comment on facebook and/or twitter (and any other means you have…perhaps direct message to preachers you know, or an email, or snail mail…telegram?)

Thanks so much for your part in this blog, I hope the associated facebook community can help to make it better and more helpful.

10 Ways to Half Preach a Text – Part ii

November 30, 2011November 23, 2011 / Peter Mead / 12 Comments

In this series of posts I am offering ten ways that I see preachers half-using a preaching text. The goal isn’t to critique, but to nudge us all to a higher view of the inspired text, a higher level of diligence in studying the text, and therefore a higher level of impact in our preaching of the text. So we’ve already considered using the text as an intro to another message, or failing to see how the details cohere, or preaching a message only nominally tied to the text itself.

4. Use the content, but ignore the context.

I use the term use deliberately. Sometimes the content of a passage could feel used because it isn’t understood in light of its context. This could be a certain term or phrase that is plucked out of its setting in a sentence and used to make a point. It could be the whole paragraph or section that is presented without awareness of how it fits in the flow of thought in the book.

I remember a conversation I had with a street preacher years ago. There are some street preachers that do a tremendous work of communicating the gospel to a busy and distracted world. This was not one of them. We got into a discussion about the Bible and I asked him what his view of the Bible was. “Oh, the Bible is like a treasure chest filled with jewels and treasures that we pick up and show to the world!” Problem was, he was plucking phrases without context and shouting random references to washing in blood and becoming white as snow, etc. It didn’t communicate. It regularly offended (in the wrong way).

That street shouter was an extreme example, but let’s not be lesser examples of the same error. Let’s be careful to always present a whole text in its context, rather than plucking the “useful” preaching bits and using, or abusing, them.

5. Use the context, but ignore the content.

I suppose this is a less common error, in my experience. But it is possible. I guess this happens more in the gospels. The preacher preaches about the ministry of Jesus in general, but doesn’t present the unique details conveyed by the gospel writer in this particular instance. (Or the preacher may preach the event accurately through harmonizing the gospels, but fail to preach the inspired text of the gospel in question.) Contextually it is possible to say Jesus was doing such and such, but if you’re preaching a particular healing narrative, preach it with good awareness of the detail the writer chose to include.

The list will build tomorrow, but feel free to comment on these or other things that come to mind at any point.

Do You Preach Concrete as Abstract?

November 28, 2011November 23, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

God didn’t give us a systematic theology with an index and table of contents. Christ didn’t work with a scribe to give us an abstract set of philosophical and theological truths that we should memorise and apply. Instead, in His wisdom, God gave us the Bible.

The Bible contains a variety of genres. Look at the New Testament, for instance. Here we have a combination of historical narrative and occasional epistles. The theology of the Bible is offered to us in the vivid action of the Gospels and Acts. It is given in the concrete situations of the first century church. As Karen Jobes puts it in her Letters to the Church (p13)

In his wisdom, God gave us, among the inspired writings, the letters of the apostles to specific Christians living in very concrete situations during times that were very trying the Christian faith. Because of that, we get to see how the Christian life was to be lived out in the context of first-century culture, and we can identify the same or similar issues today that challenge us. Rather than giving us a book of abstract philosophy or theology, God’s Word has come in the form of very practical and specific situations. It is another instance of God’s incarnational intent, to be Immanuel, God with us.

So here’s my question for the day: do we make enough effort to communicate the context of the passages we preach? I’ve seen quite a number of preachers who preach texts from the epistles as if they are abstract presentations of truth. They sometimes do a decent job of putting in concrete contemporary applications, but the text itself is treated as abstract truth statements.

God has given us a gift as preachers. He has done some of our work for us. He has given us the section of the Bible that is most likely to be abstract logical argument as occasional writings – that is, specific presentations of the gospel applied to specific churches, in specific cultural milieu, with specific issues at hand. As we re-present these texts to our listeners, before we even get to contemporary application, our listeners will be translating from 1st century concrete to 21st century concrete.

Let’s be careful not to rush past presenting the situation that sparked the writing of the text in an attempt to be relevant. Helping people to see what occasioned the epistle will already be helping them to see its relevance to us.

Saturday Short Thought: Christmas According to Sibbes

November 26, 2011November 23, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week I spent a few days on here thinking out loud about Christmas. I’ve also done quite a bit of thinking in terms of the six messages I have coming up in December. I am going with a Christ of Christmas theme, delving back beyond the start of the New Testament to tap into the epic expectation of the one anointed to be prophet, priest and king. I’m sure you have plans and ideas stirring too.

But let me throw this into the mix from a few centuries ago. Richard Sibbes is a preacher worthy of our attention. According to Sibbes, the incarnation is a greater mystery than that of creation…

“We cannot too often meditate of these things. It is the life and soul of a Christian. It is the marrow of the gospel. It is the wonder of wonders. We need not wonder at anything after this.” (Sibbes, Works 5:485)

Like Sibbes and those puritans who were like him, may we be stirred as we ponder the Incarnation. May it elicit wonder and thankfulness in our hearts. May we be stirred to preach the Christ who

“hath taken our flesh upon him for that purpose, that he might have experimental knowledge of our infirmities and weaknesses, and from that he might be the more sweet, and kind, and gentle to us.” (Sibbes, Works 5:480-2)

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Next week – Handling the Text as a Preacher

A week of posts on our handling and presenting of the biblical text.

Eternal Preaching – Part 2

October 24, 2011October 21, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Last time I listed and rebutted five reasons that the future has been squeezed out of much of the preaching in our generation (not in every church, but in many). One accusation is that preaching about the future isn’t worth it because it doesn’t offer any contemporary relevance. You know the idea – “pie in the sky when you die” kind of talk, “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use” and all that. (Support that idea biblically!)

Here’s an application shotgun blast:

Biblical teaching on the future gives us encouragement in trials (John 14:1); comfort in griefs (1Thess.4:13-18); motivation for purification (1John 2:28-3:3); it moves us toward morality (Col.3:1-5ff); it drives us to diligent spotlessness (2Peter 3:14); it leads us to lay aside lusts (Rom.13:11-14); encourages exemplary living (1Thess.5:1-11); fires our faith (Heb.10:35-39); spurs us to strengthen our hearts (James 5:7-8); produces perseverance in our service (1Cor.15:58); fires us to finish well (2Tim.4:7-8); focuses our passion for preaching (2Tim.4:1-2); stirs worship as we see the sovereign plan of God (Rom.11:25-32); and offers blessing for both reading and heeding (Rev.1:3).

I could have added more, but you get the point. (1) There is a lot of biblical content that points our thinking to future things and eternity. I didn’t touch on the gospels, or the Old Testament, in that blast. Two more mega rounds of applicational value. If we are going to preach the Bible, we can’t help but point our listeners to the future.

If we are going to seek biblical transformation in the lives of our listeners, we can’t help but speak of the future. As we see in the blast above, (2) the Bible assumes that our values are shaped by the future. Where you treasure is, there your heart will be also. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Can a follower of Christ really represent Christ in this world without having eternally shaped values?

We live in a world marked by hopelessness. Whether it is the forlorn agony of poverty, or the vain emptiness of wealth, we are surrounded by the hopeless. (3) Of all people, followers of Christ should be marked by hope, which is a biblical fruit of future focus. If we preach a Christianity bereft of future reference, we snap a leg from the stool of truth on which we sit. Sadly too many believers are trying balance on faith and love, but hope is strangely absent.

Let’s be sure to preach the Bible, shaping values and stirring hope.

Strategic Application Saving

October 14, 2011October 14, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Yesterday I met with a good friend to talk through a passage he is going to preach soon. I love conversations like that! As usual, within a few minutes I was starting to wish I were also preaching that passage. Just a side comment, but pre-preaching conversations about a passage with another preacher can be so fruitful! Anyway, onto the point of today’s post…

I think application is generally best incorporated throughout a message. So instead of lengthy explanation followed by a block of application at the end, we can demonstrate the relevance of the message from the introduction onwards, and at every transition, within every movement of the message, etc. But with the passage we were looking at yesterday, I felt that this was an opportunity for strategic application saving.

His passage has two foci of potential application. One relates to the kind of people we will encounter as we go out into the world to share the gospel. The second relates to the kind of people we are within the church. My suggestion was to make the whole focus on the former, and save the latter until the very end. Why?

My sense was that if he hinted at, or overtly referred to, the possibility that there might be people with false motives in the church, then subconsciously the listeners would have their guard up. Instead, better to focus the application of the passage on “the big world out there and what we will encounter as we share the gospel” for the bulk of the message, allow the listeners to become engrossed in the narrative from Acts, and then at the end introduce the “but what about us in here” target.

Withholding an aspect of application can be very strategic when listeners drop their guard and are therefore more open to be struck by its relevance. Our tendency as preachers is to give away too much early on in the message. Even a little comment like, “this passage speaks to what we will meet out there, and also what kind of people we are…” – that mini comment early on could change the reception of the entire message.

If part of the relevance of a message might be resisted, pay special attention to when you introduce the thought. One option is to avoid early references to it, get the guard to drop, and then perhaps it will hit home more strategically.

Woven Threads of Meaning

October 12, 2011October 12, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Here’s a post from back in the early days of this site that I think is worthy of a review (and as in sermon preparation, I’ll find myself tweaking it as I look at it again!)

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Sometimes a passage may prove more complex than it initially appears. This is almost always the case with stories in the Gospels. Christians tend to view each story as a distinct unit that can be pulled out from the context in which it is placed. In reality, each story or account in a Gospel is carefully woven together with others for a purpose.

For example, the stilling of the storm in Mark 4 is placed after, and linked to, the first part of the chapter where Jesus is teaching about the kingdom using parables. The episode is connected to teaching on the small beginnings, but inevitable growth of the kingdom programme. However, in Matthew the account is in a series of miracle stories, quite separate from those same parables (which appear later). While someone might suggest this indicates that what comes before and after is irrelevant to the interpretation of the passage, actually the opposite is true. The stories themselves, just like words, seem to get their meaning not only from within themselves, but also from the company they keep.

So while a story may appear simple to understand, as you study it in its context you often find greater clarity in its meaning and purpose. Then as you consider the context and flow of thought more, the interpretation may become more involved and complex. As a preacher your first priority is not to “find a sermon,” but to do everything you can to understand the passage.

Once you’ve done all that you can to understand the passage, you then have to form the sermon. The temptation will be to dump every element of your study into the sermon. Don’t. What is necessary and helpful? What must be explained, what can simply be stated, what parts of your presentation need proof? How much time do you have to support what you say? Sometimes you will discover that your understanding of a passage has multiple threads of complexity, stretching out through layer after layer of other stories and accounts within the Gospel.

Be thankful for the back-up support you have, but only give as much as is necessary and your listeners can handle. They may be fine with one layer of contextual explanation, but overwhelmed if you present five. Know the passage fully, but also know what your listeners need and are able to take onboard!

This principle applies in every genre – explain as much as necessary, and save as much time as possible for connecting the passage to the people in front of you!

More Help in the Vicinity

September 28, 2011September 25, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday we were thinking about texts that don’t sit up and easily offer engaging and interesting sermon spice. Perhaps they lack illustrative content, or engaging narratival features. The temptation is to relegate the text to a small role in the making of the sermon and break out a couple of humdinger illustrations that you know will stir the listeners. Before you resort to such tactics, I’m encouraging you to poke around in the neighbourhood of the text some more.

Yesterday we thought about the situation of the author and the recipients. Both point to narrative potential, even in the midst of an epistle. Here are a couple more leads to follow before you move on from the desk and get too creative in your sermon preparation:

3. What about a quotation? It’s hard to get through a paragraph in the New Testament without there being a quote or allusion or wording from the Old Testament. A bit of digging here might shine light on the text and offer more angles for the preaching of the text. Of course, good exegesis should have unearthed the quotes, but perhaps another look as a preacher will yield some potential colour for your sermon. Maybe Old Testament story, maybe something in the cross-over from back then to the day of the author.

4. What about the rest of the book? Seems strange to say it, but preachers can sometimes fall into the same trap many commentators seem to meet – atomistic Bible reading. That is, you are preaching from verses 5-11, so you only really focus on verses 5-11 (and in some cases, one verse at a time!) It is part of the flow of the whole, so look around again and see how your section works in the whole of the book. This might yield an angle from which to preach the text with greater engagement and interest.

There is always a danger that our passion to preach well can move us on from understanding the passage to the max. Don’t be in too much of a rush, but instead be sure to diligently dive into every detail in the text, and in the vicinity.

So What You Are Saying Is . . .

June 2, 2011May 10, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

So let’s say you are preaching on Ephesians 2:1-10. And you happen to see on Facebook that the Apostle Paul is preaching at an event not far from you on that very text, just two days before you are due to preach. Let’s assume he is not able to come and take your preaching engagement, but you can get to hear his.

After he preaches the passage, explaining his way through it, you decide to cut to the bottom line. You approach him afterwards and get to him before any of the others who line up behind you. “Thanks Paul, great to meet you, so you are saying, in Ephesians 2:1-10…” then you just decide to state your main idea of the passage to him, “that God saved us by grace, making us alive so that we can do good works?”

If Paul’s response might be, “uh, yes, sort of, but what I’m mostly saying is that it is all of God’s grace that he has made us who were dead, alive with Christ . . .” then you should change your message. If your main idea is not what he’d say his main idea was in the passage, then your main idea should change.

Remember, as a preacher your task is not to come up with your own message somehow based on a text. Your job is to re-present the message of that text, targeted to a new audience and situation, but remaining genuinely faithful to the intent of the author. Be nice to ask him in person, but let’s be sure to check our main idea against the text itself, and to do so more than once. Feel free to ask someone else too, not the author, but someone who will look at the text carefully and test your idea.